The war protest in Washington D.C. this past weekend seemed little remarked upon in the news that I have seen since.  I wonder if they kept it all hidden successfully from George?   After all, we have been, for seven years, inundated in media commentary about how “insulated” he is from the life that so many of us seem to be treading water in, somewhat frantically.  George likes his life to be like “Home on the Range” where never a discouraging word is heard.  (Note to George: Asshat—that is because the song was about being a cowboy, and cattle cannot TALK.  It is not license to handpick your audiances and ignore bad news.)

But that isn’t what my rant here today is really about, for once Georgie boy, it is NOT about you except on a tangent.  It is about insulation—you do seem to have about a R-144000  coat of it, heavy, considering R-40 in my attic is sufficient for me.  When I first moved here and we put the new blanket of insulation up there, we found out a lot about its capabilities and lacks.  It kept the house warmer,  but it didn’t stop leaks.  When heavy rain sent a drip down a rafter, part of my living room ceiling turned a rather shocking shade of pink.  The Pink Panther theme is not even what played in my head at that moment.

Nor did that theme play in my head this week as I thought about insulation more of the type-brand which George uses.  The Dark Wraith (see blogroll, please) brought that other brand—which should, by all rights, come not in pink, but in shit brown —to mind.  He wrote at length about one of the instances of failure in medical/dental care for people of low income and no insurance.  I was shaking when I got to the end and couldn’t even bring myself to comment for a couple days.  Yes, indeed, lack of a coherent national health care plan is a problem.

But the problem is also something else: insulation.  Insulation of the wrong type–not what keeps the winter cold at bay or prevents the wires in your wall from catching fire–insulation from your fellow HUMANS and their damnably inconvenient suffering is the problem I have to scream about today.  You see, the Wraith’s dentist told him people used to die of the sort of problem he had—-and the same dentist didn’t even call him back as he suffered untreated when he had learned that Wraith was turned down for a loan to pay.  The silky voiced office staff and electronic answering machines insulated him from the need to relate person to person.  This after the dentist HAD him in his office and medicated and ready to solve the problems with ten minutes and whatever fancy name dentist’s call ‘pliers’ in hand.

How nice to have such a switch off from caring and giving a shit about a person.  Kill me if I ever find one that effective, ok?  Because I would have to be almost as dead as Terri Shiavo to act in that manner.  In this oh-so-Christian nation (as I am consantly beat over the head with it), what the hell ever happened to “there but for the grace of God go I” and other perfectly GOOD things like the story of the Good Samaritan?

Don’t even tell me all that is necessary to maintain a practice in dentistry or medicine.  I SAW the counter example in Mexico this summer.  My stepmom there is fighting breast cancer; though American she cannot access Medicare where she has been living in Mexico.   (She lives there because only there can she survive on $1000 a month in Social Security benefits.)  I have been paying for her chemotherapy all summer, and in August went personally to pay for her surgery, a radical mastectomy, and to provide aftercare and talk her into moving in with me when she recovers.  She is undergoing more chemo, I am writing more checks.  The fees in Sonora are a terrific bargain compared to paying the full cost of American style medicine.  But the biggest shock…and wonder?  The total lack of insulation.

Her oncologist and surgeon met me, shook my hand and assured me he would accept my personal check so N. didn’t need to run to the bank as she endured chemo in the months following her operation.  Every time she had a question from home, post surgery and called….they hunted down the DOCTOR to answer her.  And last weekend, when she went to an open house at his office (on the occasion of Mexican Independance Day) this man FED his former and current patients a lavish spread of yummies.  Then he hunted down my step mom, and told her he would drive her home to change out of her dress clothing—that she should come to the doctor’s FAMILY bash at the family ranch.  And he drove her, home and to the ranch where they again had food, and music, and dancing and horseback riding and games.  He told her the exercise and excitement were good for her.  He took her home at the end and she slept well.  No, they were not friends before her illness; he was not her regular doctor.  No, he wasn’t trying to get into her pants.  THIS is how people can live if they do not swathe themselves in INSULATION.  This is what LIFE can BE—-warm and sharing and lush with what Doris Lessing once called “the substance of we.”

Now, people do not insulate themselves from life and people because they start out as assholes.  They are afraid.  Afraid they won’t know how and when to say no.  Afraid they cannot handle the suffering, the pain, the unexpected.  (Afraid like me…on my Labyrinth, wondering if the dead are really there with me as it often seems, wondering if my effort is a piece of silly romanticism instead of something real.)  BUT, make no mistake, once you hit some kind of critical mass in insulation factors, you DO become some kind of asshole.

Each layer makes it easier to ignore someone who does not deserve being ignored.  Each layer makes it easier to think “their” feelings are not like your own; that “their” pains are brought upon themselves, unlike your own.  Each layer removes you from your participation in the fates of your species  instead of freeing you to choose whether or not to aid them.   Judgment is critical, we should be free to choose what we can and cannot handle, accomplish, and solve and what we should run from, screaming.  But with enough layers of insulation, the judgment demanded by each intersection between humans disappears, because the intersection itself disappears.  Now, I am not a nice woman; for instance, I can support capital punishment for many crimes.  I feel there are criminals whose deeds put them outside the human pale….and that they should never again have the right to prey upon those softer sheep-fleecy ones inside the safe fencings of law and ethics.  But I feel I have to continue to swim in the issue-infested waters of humanity and reality and will not encase myself in reality-proof insulation more than I must to maintain my sanity.  I feel that  those who willingly and so comfortably insulate themselves above and out of the mass of humanity need more than a Dickons-esque dream with Need and Ignorance playing starring roles.

They need to be peeled of those insulating layers like an onion.  And then, like an onion being roasted to caramel goodness?  They need a bit of salt put where it will do them the most good.  Ignoring those of our society who are NOT safe, not secure is not going to make or keep any of us secure.  It is only, as Pink Floyd put it, going to leave us  trapped “in the dream of the proud”……..more so and faster, the faster we “turn away.”  We are smothering our humanity in insulation.  And if we don’t stop, we might just deserve to suffocate.

Read the painful news…Dafur and the rest of the cauldron of suffering that is Africa.  Think about making your own coffee four days a week and giving a few bucks to Doctors Without Borders.  Don’t ignore the panhandler—even if you have no money, say good morning, it won’t kill you.  Get rid of your electronic  “press one” box if you own one.  I could write SUCH a list…and that is WHY people insulate.  Because there is a tsunami of need and horror out there.  Wake up, your personal ceiling is turning putrid pink; insulation won’t save you.  You don’t have to fight EVERY battle, pick your battle–large or small, find something human to commit to and battle for; the pain is less than the nightmare you are barely holding at bay, and the scars you will get are honorable and mark you as homo sapiens instead of homo assholeus.